Saturday, October 17, 2009

The lighter skin of SOME Egyptians is not necessarily a marker of "whiteness?" The Saharan and Sudanic peoples who played a major part in populating Egypt have a range of INDIGENOUS features, and indeed in Africa itself, ancient populations like the San have yellowish and light brown skin. Their primary haplogroup is A, found overwhelming in Africa. They are thus firmly an African population. Indeed hap A also occurs at almost 60% in the southern Sudan. (Hassan 2008) So this supposedly magical "light brown" skin or "light skin" is quite within the indigenous range of African peoples. Skin color is also influenced by climate. Peoples not in the hotter desert or jungle regions, like those near the Mediterranean Sea in the far north tend to have lighter skin, but they are STILL African. In Africa people move in and out of such zones for centuries. Narrow nosed, thin lipped Tkutsi with dark skin have DNA that is overwhelming West African, and don't need supposedly "mystical" "Caucasoids" to explain why.

the foreign"brown skin" notion falls flat in ultra diverse Africa, the most diverse region in the world. Indeed mainstream European dictionary definitions of "black people" includes people with "brown skin". So much for "wandering Caucasoids" needed to provide brown skin.

It may be true that the foreign influences may have changed SOME Egyptians, but fundamentally, the ancient peoples of the Nile Valley did not need any “race mix” with “inflowing Caucasoids” to have light skin, or narrow noses, or any of a dozen variants? Climate and deep rooted ancient lineages account for such INDIGENOUS variability without the need for reputed “wandering Caucasoids” to explain why?

) Egypt did not need any “Nubians” to change its genetic makeup. Its early phases show more clustering with Aaharan and Sudanic populations (Keita 1993, 2004). Nor did it need any ‘Nubians’ to give it dark skin. Dark skin has been in Egypt since ancient times. Ancient Egyptians were an INDIGENOUS African population, and they link with other African groups more than Europeans or Middle Easterners even with the centuries of gene flow from the Middle East and Europe.

Limb proportions are just one example, showing a variety of factors at work, including climate.

(b) Trying to make “Nubians” out to be foreign migrants and by implication “blacks” is a bogus game. The people ethnically the closest to the Egyptians were Nubians, a point shown by respected mainstream Egyptologists like Yurco.

[b]Nubians were ethnically the closest people to the Egyptians. Conflict between the two were typical clashes between kingdoms without the simplistic "racial" models drawn by some 20th century writers.[/b]

Quote 1:

"The ancient Egyptians referred to a region, located south of the third cataract the Nile River, in which Nubians dwelt as Kush.. Within such context, this phrase is not a racial slur. Throughout the history of ancient Egypt there were numerous, well documented instances that celebrate Nubian-Egyptian marriages. A study of these documents, particularly those dated to both the Egyptian New Kingdom (after 1550 B.C.E.) and to Dynasty XXV and early Dynasty XXVI (about 720-640 BCE), reveals that neither spouse nor any of the children of such unions suffered discrimination at the hands of the ancient Egyptians. Indeed such marriages were never an obstacle to social, economic, or political status, provided the individuals concerned conformed to generally accepted Egyptian social standards. Furthermore, at times, certain Nubian practices, such as tattooing for women, and the unisex fashion of wearing earrings, were wholeheartedly embraced by the ancient Egyptians." (Bianchi, 2004: p. 4)

'It is an extremely difficult task to attempt to describe the Nubians during the course of Egypt's New Kingdom, because their presence appears to have virtually evaporated from the archaeological record.. The result has been described as a wholesale Nubian assimilation into Egyptian society. This assimilation was so complete that it masked all Nubian ethnic identities insofar as archaeological remains are concerned beneath the impenetrable veneer of Egypt's material; culture.. In the Kushite Period, when Nubians ruled as Pharaohs in their own right, the material culture of Dynasty XXV (about 750-655 B.C.E.) was decidedly Egyptian in character.. Nubia's entire landscape up to the region of the Third Cataract was dotted with temples indistinguishable in style and decoration from contemporary temples erected in Egypt. The same observation obtains for the smaller number of typically Egyptian tombs in which these elite Nubian princes were interred. (Bianchi, 2004, p. 99-100)

- Robert Bianchi ( 2004). Daily Life of the Nubians. Greenwood Publishing Group

[b]One of Egypt's greatest dynasties, the 12th, originated from dark-skinned Nubian stock, according to conservative Egyptologist F. Yurco (1989). The 12th Dynasty ruled approximately 1000 years BEFORE the well known "black" 25th Dynasty.[/b]

Quote 2:

"the XIIth Dynasty (1991-1786 B.C.E.) originated from the Aswan region.4 As expected, strong Nubian features and dark coloring are seen in their sculpture and relief work. This dynasty ranks as among the greatest, whose fame far outlived its actual tenure on the throne. Especially interesting, it was a member of this dynasty- that decreed that no Nehsy (riverine Nubian of the principality of Kush), except such as came for trade or diplomatic reasons, should pass by the Egyptian fortress at the southern end of the Second Nile Cataract. Why would this royal family of Nubian ancestry ban other Nubians from coming into Egyptian territory? Because the Egyptian rulers of Nubian ancestry had become Egyptians culturally; as pharaohs, they exhibited typical Egyptian attitudes and adopted typical Egyptian policies."

"Among the foreigners, the Nubians were closest ethnically to the Egyptians. In the late predynastic period (c. 3700-3150 B.C.E.), the Nubians shared the same culture as the Egyptians and even evolved the same pharaonic political structure."

Afrocentric critic Mary Lefkowitz says the Egypt was peopled by people from sub-Saharan Africa, not Europeans or Middle Easterners, and even agrees that to call Ancient Egyptians black is reasonable."Recent work on skeletons and DNA suggests that the people who settled in the Nile valley, like all of humankind, came from somewhere south of the Sahara; they were not (as some nineteenth-century scholars had supposed) invaders from the North. See Bruce G. Trigger, "The Rise of Civilization in Egypt," Cambridge History of Africa (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982), vol I, pp 489-90; S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54."(Mary Lefkotitz (1997). Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History. Basic Books. pg 242)In Black Athena Revisited, Lefkowitz finds similarity between Egyptians and Sudanics and recommends the work of conservative anthropologist Nancy Lovell for more research on the subject.

Quote:"not surprisingly, the Egyptian skulls were not very distance from the Jebel Moya [a Neolithic site in the southern Sudan] skulls, but were much more distance from all others, including those from West Africa. Such a study suggests a closer genetic affinity between peoples in Egypt and the northern Sudan, which were close geographically and are known to have had considerable cultural contact throughout prehistory and pharaonic history... Clearly more analyses of the physical remains of ancient Egyptians need to be done using current techniques, such as those of Nancy Lovell at the University of Alberta is using in her work.."(- Mary Lefkowitz, "Black Athena Revisted. pp. 105-106)

Lefkowitz cites Keita 1993 in Not Out of Africa. Here is Keita on the Jebel Moya studies:"Overall, when the Egyptian crania are evaluated in a Near Eastern (Lachish) versus African (Kerma, Jebel Moya, Ashanti) context) the affinity is with the Africans. The Sudan and Palestine are the most appropriate comparative regions which would have 'donated' people, along with the Sahara and Maghreb. Archaeology validates looking to these regions for population flow (see Hassan 1988)... Egyptian groups showed less overall affinity to Palestinian and Byzantine remains than to other African series, especially Sudanese."S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54

Here is the work of the anthropologist so strongly recommended by Lefkowitz, Nancy Lovell:"There is now a sufficient body of evidence from modern studies of skeletal remains to indicate that the ancient Egyptians, especially southern Egyptians, exhibited physical characteristics that are within the range of variation for ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa.. In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas." (Nancy C. Lovell, " Egyptians, physical anthropology of," in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999) pp 328-332)

and"must be placed in the context of hypotheses informed by archaeological, linguistic, geographic and other data. In such contexts, the physical anthropological evidence indicates that early Nile Valley populations can be identified as part of an African lineage, but exhibiting local variation. This variation represents the short and long term effects of evolutionary forces, such as gene flow, genetic drift, and natural selection, influenced by culture and geography." ("Nancy C. Lovell, " Egyptians, physical anthropology of," in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999). pp 328-332)

The same Nancy Lovell recommended by Lefkowitz studied dental traits among some high status persons of the key Egyptian Naqada group and found that they resembled the peoples of Nubia.

"A biological affinities study based on frequencies of cranial nonmetric traits in skeletal samples from three cemeteries at Predynastic Naqada, Egypt, confirms the results of a recent nonmetric dental morphological analysis. Both cranial and dental traits analyses indicate that the individuals buried in a cemetery characterized archaeologically as high status are significantly different from individuals buried in two other, apparently non-elite cemeteries and that the non-elite samples are not significantly different from each other. A comparison with neighboring Nile Valley skeletal samples suggests that the high status cemetery represents an endogamous ruling or elite segment of the local population at Naqada, which is more closely related to populations in northern Nubia than to neighboring populations in southern Egypt."(T. Prowse, and N. Lovell "Concordance of cranial and dental morphological traits and evidence for endogamy in ancient Egypt". American journal of physical anthropology. 1996, vol. 101, no2, pp. 237-246 (2 p.1/4)

In "Black Athena Revisted" Lefkowitz warns against Eurocentric "racial" analysis as to the Egyptians and Nubians.

"The Nubian tribute-bearers are painted in two skin tones, black and dark brown. These tones do not necessarily represent actual skin tones in real life but may serve to distinguish each tribute-bearer from the next in a row in which the figures overlap. Alternatively, the brown-skinned people may be of Nubian origin, and the black-skinned ones may be farther south (Trigger 1978, 33). The shading of skin tones in Egyptian tomb paintings, which varies considerably, may not be a certain criterion for distinguishing race. Specific symbols of ethnic identity can also vary. Identifying race in Egyptian representational art, again, is difficult to do- probably because race (as opposed to ethnic affiliation, that is, Egyptians versus all non-Egyptians) was not a criterion for differentiation used by the ancient Egyptians...""

DEBUNKING OF THE OBSOLETE WORK OF EUGENE STROUHAL - CIRCA 1971 ( a favorite of white appropriators of the Egyptian heritage.) Strouhal's laughable claim is that of a white European group in ancient Nubia that underwent a mysterious "negroidization". Assorted racists and "bio-diversity" types on the web still reference this rubbish in desperate attempts to conjure a "Nordic" ancient Egypt. Among their laughably bogus tactics is the use of the brief, very late period samples of Egypt - the time of the Persians, Greeks etc - as "representative" of the ancient peoples, excluding the previous 2500 - 3000 years of Egyptian civilization.

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Some conservative Egyptologists and classicists see the use of the term “black” to describe the ancient Egyptians as outmoded but reasonable, in terms of European social constructs on race, such as the “one-drop rule”.

QUOTE: From the conservative Oxford encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt

"Physical anthropologists are increasingly concluding that racial definitions are the culturally defined product of selective perception and should be replaced in biological terms by the study of populations and clines. Consequently, any characterization of race of the ancient Egyptians depend on modern cultural definitions, not on scientific study. Thus, by modern American standards it is reasonable to characterize the Egyptians as `blacks' [i.e in a social sense] while acknowledging the scientific evidence for the physical diversity of Africans."
--The Oxford encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, 2001. Volume 3. Oxford University Press. p. 27-28

Some Egyptologists see a variety of skin colors and find the Nubians as ethnically the closest to ancient Egyptians. Quote:

"The ancient Egyptians, like their modern descendants, were of varying complexions of color, from the light Mediterranean type (like Nefertiti) to the light brown of Middle Egypt, to the darker brown of Upper Egypt, to the darkest shade around Aswan and the first Cataract region, where even today, the population shifts to Nubian..“

"Among the foreigners, the Nubians were closest ethnically to the Egyptians. In the late predynastic period (c. 3700-3150 B.C.E.), the Nubians shared the same culture as the Egyptians and even evolved the same pharaonic political structure.”
-- Frank Yurco, 'Were the ancient Egyptians black or white?', Bib Arch Review. v15, no. 5, 1989

Some Egyptologists acknowledge a double standard in European scholarship where dark-skinned groups like some southern Europeans would be ‘black’ based on colorism, but dark-skinned people in Egypt are curiously classified as “white.” Similar tactics have been used to discriminate against Jews and Mediterranean groups such as Italians. QUOTE:“If the range of physical types found in the African population is recognized, and the designation "white" is restricted to those populations that have none of the characteristics that are found in any African populations, many southern Europeans and much of the population of the Middle East can be characterized as "black." This method was at one time adopted by "white" American schools and clubs, which compared applicants to the "white" physical types of Northern Europe, and found that many people of Jewish or Mediterranean heritage did not measure up. ..They want to show that according to modern Western categories, the ancient Egyptians would have been regarded as black. This approach is not invalidated by the cultural limitations of racial designations just outlined, because it is an attempt to combat a distinct modern, Western tradition of racist argument, a tradition which has the effect of limiting the aspirations of young African-Americans and deprecating the achievements of their ancestors."
--Macy Roth 1995. Building Bridges to Afrocentrism. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. Vol 775, 313–326